New research from Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington shows that religion, and Christianity in particular, holds "persistent and exceptional intensity" in the U.S., The Federalist reports.
"The United States clearly stands out as exceptional," researchers Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock wrote in Sociological Science, "almost one in three Americans prays multiple times a day, but the average for other countries is only about one in fifteen."
Additionally, the United States has "a rate of more-than-weekly attendance about twice as high as the second-highest country and more than three times as high as the average for other countries," and "about a third of the American public [say] the Bible is the literal word of God. In Ireland, the only other country where more than 10 percent of the public are biblical literalists, fewer than one in five people are biblical literalists."
Between 1991 and 2014 the number of people who attend religious services multiple times a week has increased, and from 1991 and 2008, the percentage of people in the U.S. who pray multiple times each day has increased as well.
"We have demonstrated . . . that only moderate religion has declined and that the intensity of American religion is persistent and exceptional," Schnabel and Bock write. "The decline of moderate religion is not, therefore, a pervasive secularization consistent with the secularization thesis. Instead, it appears to be a reaction of moderates against religion that has become too intense, too strict, and too politicized in the face of social change."
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